YMMV / Silent Witness

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Was DI Chrissy Reed from "Trust" actually just an ambitious woman who made a few mistakes and genuinely cared about Jack, or was she really just a Manipulative Bitch who knowingly tampered with evidence and slept her way to the top?
• Archive Panic: Can result in this, seeing as the show has been running, uninterrupted, for over two decades. There's roughly eight to ten episodes per season (though some of the later ones ran for twelve), which equals over to 200 episodes in all. Due to its two-part episode format, missing the first part of one story can lead to a lot of confusion. There are also four tie-in novels published in the show's early years.
• Awesome Music: The beautiful yet haunting theme, "Silencium" by John Harle.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Clarissa Mullery, for being a wise-cracking Deadpan Snarker who provides some much needed humour on a show that is often rather bleak and gritty, played by Liz Carr, with fans frequently wishing for Clarissa to get more focus in the stories or for the writers to reveal more about her past and personal life. She’s also been praised for being a positive example of a disabled character who is well-rounded and not solely defined by her disability.
  • Sam Ryan, played by Amanda Burton, to a certain extent. Despite only starring in seven seasons out of a total of twenty-one (she was a main character in Series 8, but only for two episodes), she is still widely and fondly remembered by many fans. A lot of people were hoping she'd show up for Silent Witness's 20th anniversary and still hold out hope that she'll reappear someday and in the after credits stinger for Season 24 she does just that.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Nikki/Harry is a popular pairing. It's helped by the massive amounts of Unresolved Sexual Tension and Ship Tease between the two (and the fact all their other love interests are derailed in one way or another).
  • The Nikki and Jack ship's popularity began to rise around Series 19 and has only increased after the events of Series 20's final two episodes.
• Funny Moments: See here.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • An in-universe example in "Greater Love". After Leo gets beaten up, Nikki states that he's "the closest thing to a father I have" and that she doesn't know what she'd do without him. At the end of the episode Leo is killed protecting her and others from a suicide bomber.
  • The common plot point of the main characters being threatened or nearly killed by criminals, after Liz Carr (Clarissa) was attacked in real life (non-fatally, fortunately) by a man wielding scissors.
• Heartwarming Moments: At the beginning of Series 17, Thomas making an effort to save Leo’s old office chair from being thrown out and placing it at Nikki’s desk as a peace offering, acknowledging how much Leo meant to her.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jack Hodgson's been Rey's step-uncle and Padmé's bodyguard. ^note in the 2016 film Jackie
  • Emilia Fox is also known for playing the sorceress Morgause in Merlin (2008), where she makes repeated attempts to kill Bradley James's character, Arthur Pendragon. On Silent Witness, Nikki once dated one Greg Walker, portrayed by Tobias Menzies, whose character in Underworld: Blood Wars also has a crack at killing Bradley James. In the same film, he also tries to kill Theo James's character...and Theo James plays Fox's love interest in the 2017 play Sex With Strangers. And then one remembers that Charles Dance plays Theo James's dad in Blood Wars; years earlier, he played Maxim de Winter, whilst Fox played his wife, Mrs de Winter, in a miniseries adaptation of Rebecca.
  • Jodie Comer portrays a girl named Eve in "Fear" and later became famous for starring in the show Killing Eve.
• It Was His Sled: Most viewers generally know about Leo Dalton's death in the finale of Series 16 by now.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • "World Cruise": Doctor Josef Horowitz is a genial, respected academic who lost his entire family in Auschwitz and was forced to watch his twin brother Aaron die in a Nazi experiment. Now a frail, old man dying from lung cancer Josef vows to avenge Aaron dubbing it his "World Cruise". Killing his targets by injecting glycol into their hearts inducing a fatal attack, the same way Aaron was murdered. Tracking down the Dawidowicz brothers who betrayed them in the camp out of desperation, Josef charms them into inviting him to lunch then drugs, restrains and murders them. Horrified to discover an innocent man is being charged for the double murder, Josef subtly steers the investigation towards thuggish local Neo-Nazi Carl Martin. Luring Martin to Brussels the same day he murdered a former SS Doctor, Josef left the scene pointing at Martin, his efforts leading to Martin being exposed for drowning a kindly old Jewish man, just as Josef suspected. The final war criminal having successfully reinvented himself as a famous geneticist, to gain access to him Josef impersonated a reporter then sat with Professor Neumann as he died admitting "he didn't deserve a peaceful death."
  • "Legacy": Tom Hancock is a grieving father whose son Peter became gravely ill with multiple forms of cancer. Suspicious after all of his friends came down with the same ailments, Tom becomes convinced a government coverup was responsible for his son's death and is determined to expose it at any cost. Taking his comatose son "hostage" with a shotgun, Tom switches off his life support, but lets everyone else on the ward go. Contacting Professor Leo Dalton, Tom successfully manipulates him into investigating the cause of his son's illness. When Leo and the pathology team find evidence of a coverup involving a nuclear weapon stashed in an underground bunker by Sir William Embelton, Tom, despite growing to like and admire Leo, tricks him into taking him to the location. Determined to take revenge, Tom steals some lethally radioactive material and then breaks into Sir William's home to demand an apology. Upon Sir William spitefully refusing, Tom gains admittance to the office of Sir William's son James and uses his engineering skills to rig the lethally radioactive material into an air conditioning unit, all whilst disguised as an ordinary repairman. After the trap triggers and contaminates both James and corrupt government agent David Loader, Tom hands himself into the authorities, his revenge complete and the cover up exposed.
• Moment of Awesome: Nikki Alexander going up against serial killer Arnold Mears (James Cosmo) and efficiently breaking him down using her intellect and some well-chosen words in "Paradise Lost".
• Nightmare Fuel: See here.
• Replacement Scrappy: A few viewers saw Jack as this for the popular Harry, when his character first appeared. Mostly, Harry/Nikki shippers or people who found him to be a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Harry. However, this mostly seems to have died off now, likely due to Jack being established as an independent character in his own right rather than a carbon copy of Harry. There are even an increasing number of fans (starting from around Season 19) who actually ship Nikki and Jack together.
• Retroactive Recognition: Quite a few British actors had supporting roles or bit parts on Silent Witness before going on to more high-profile work (especially given the show is a Long Runner).
  • Idris Elba appeared as Charlie in the 1997 story "Blood, Sweat and Tears".
  • The 1998 story "An Academic Exercise" featured Nicholas Hoult as Tom Evans, in one of his earliest roles.
  • Benedict Cumberbatch had a supporting role as Warren Reid in 2002's "Tell No Tales".
  • Freema Agyeman had a small role as crime scene officer Mary Ogden in the 2005 episode "Choices".
  • Natalia Kills had a main role as Kelly Wetherby in 2006's "Supernova".
  • Joseph Mawle appeared in 2006's "Schism" as Adrian Burney.
  • In 2007, Joseph Morgan portrayed Matthew Williams in "Suffer the Children".
  • In 2012, Jodie Comer played Eve Gliston in "Fear".
  • Daisy Ridley had a main role as Hannah Kennedy, Jack's step-niece, in the 2014 story "Fraternity".
  • Hoskins' assistant in the "Divided Loyalties" two-parter is played by Andrée Bernard, who would later be best known for playing Liz Burton in Hollyoaks.
• Seasonal Rot: Some viewers feel that the show has started to suffer from this. Some say the rot first began when Sam Ryan left, others say it's when Harry left or Leo died. Common criticisms include the storylines focusing less on the characters and more on the cases, and the storylines becoming less plausible and more over-the-top. However, this is strictly YMMV, as the show remains one of the longest-running crime shows in the world and rakes in millions of viewers. Season 18 in particular was highly praised, and many viewers actually prefer the episodic style of the series and ensemble cast, and feel that the stories, whilst they may not be strictly realistic, are still entertaining and current.
• Squick: The extremely graphic and realistic autopsy scenes featured in every episode can be this for some viewers, if not outright Nausea Fuel.
• Tearjerker: See here.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A minor example compared to some, but several fans are not happy about the theme song being changed for Series 21. Technically, it's still John Harle's "Silencium", just in a different arrangement, but some fans are still ticked off (mostly because they "can't sing along" now).
• Unexpected Character: Not a lot of people were expecting Leo Dalton to briefly show up in flashback form in the second part of "Awakening".
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: It's not clear if she is intended to be sympathetic, but Katie, Carl's wife, from Series 18's "One of Our Own", is hard to feel sorry for. Sure, the man she loves was brutally murdered, but at the same time, she was cheating on her husband Carl with Honeywell, who was her husband's best friend. At one point, she even ditches her kids with a babysitter to go hook up with Honeywell. Carl doesn't appear to be a bad husband; he clearly loves Katie and the only real reason Katie gives for cheating is that Honeywell pays attention to her and "makes her feel special". Carl himself states the reason he's been somewhat distant lately is because he's been working overtime to provide for them all, so it's not like he's intentionally mistreating her or abusing her in any way. Finally, when Honeywell turns up dead, Katie's immediate assumption is that her husband must have killed him. She never even considers another suspect - nope, Carl must've killed his best friend - the cop working around drug dealers and other dangerous people 24/7 - because of our affair (Carl didn't kill Honeywell, by the way). She never really apologizes for falsely accusing her husband of his best friend's murder or cheating on him and instead just sits there wailing about how she misses her lover, whilst Carl is in the midst of a (perfectly understandable) mental breakdown.
• The Woobie:
  • Geraldine Briggs (played by Sharon Small) from "Change". Dear God. She was raped at the age of sixteen by her uncle and got pregnant. Her father wouldn't let her have an abortion, didn't believe her about being raped and forced her to not only carry the pregnancy to term, but keep it a secret to avoid a scandal. When she finally had the baby, she grew to love her, only for her parents to take her baby away to be adopted. Her mother straight up told her she was "put on this earth to endure pain" and it's implied she was blamed for her death. She was estranged from her father for years, then he died suddenly. Geraldine meets a young woman she's been lead to believe is her daughter...only for her to be murdered. Then it turns out she wasn't her daughter. And then she gets accused of murdering her. And then, her only friend is murdered and she's accused of killing her too! It's definitely a Heartwarming Moment when Nikki tracks down Geraldine's real daughter and they are reunited.
  • Jack Hodgson in Fraternity, especially by the end. He very nearly ruined his reputation and his relationship with his colleagues, came close to losing his job, and was seriously injured and almost killed in an effort to prove his brother Ryan's innocence in a murder case. Then it turns out that Ryan, whilst he isn't a murderer, still manipulated a teenage girl into sleeping with a doctor to blackmail him, which directly lead to her death and the death of Ryan's stepdaughter, after he spent the whole time telling Jack he wasn't involved. His relationship with his brother is left in tatters, and is possibly damaged beyond repair after Jack turns him in to the police, unable to bear the guilt. The look on his face as he watches Ryan being arrested really says it all.
  • Leo. He never really gets over his wife and daughter dying in a car accident, his new long-term relationship breaks down eventually partly because of his ongoing grief and just when it seems he can start anew, he's forced to sacrifice himself to save his teammates and dozens of other people from a suicide bomber.
  • Harry, especially in "Bloodlines". He spends almost the entirety of that story on the run from both Hungarian cops and gangsters after being framed for his girlfriend's murder, is almost killed several times and just generally has a terrible time. And that's just one storyline. This isn't even getting into his chronically depressed father committing suicide when he was just a child, his apparent Cartwright Curse when it comes to relationships...
  • Nikki. Oh, Nikki. Life really hasn't been kind to her at times, starting off with her father abandoning her, going right up to being kidnapped and nearly killed at least once per season, seeing her boss and surrogate father blown up in front of her and even being framed for murder. She also gets PTSD after being buried alive in Series 20, although given her comments to her therapist her trauma goes much deeper than that, stemming back to her mother's untimely death when she was a teenager. To be honest, it's surprising she hadn't broken down much earlier.
  • Clarissa in the "One Day" storyline, where she reveals to Jack that she's secretly terrified of her loved ones abandoning her because of her disability; she's very affected by the story's main issue, which involves people with disabilities being abused, dehumanised and/or deemed a burden. There's a flashback to her as a child when her mother was late to pick her up from school and another girl claimed that she'd deliberately left her behind. And that's to say nothing of her own present day Near-Death Experience at the hands of the villain.

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